steampowered sunday Archives - Page 2 of 6

Not A Bel Game

July 3, 2014 by Belghast

Thomas Was Not Alone

Two significant things happened last night. First we went out to eat and dinner did not set well with me, causing me to want to go lay down for a bit. The second of which was that I decided to take my new Playstation Vita with me. Now I have done this before with other handhelds, but what was significant here is that thanks to Playstation Plus I had a smorgasbord of games that I could download and play that were already attached to my account. The first game I gave a shot was Terraria, which I have played a truly silly number of hours of on the PC. The game almost translates to the handheld, but not quite making it so much more frustrating of an experience especially when it comes to trying to build anything. When I decided to stop playing that, I opted to boot up a game I have heard so many things about from my friends.

Thomas Was Alone is this deceptively simple game about getting a series of different blocks with different properties through mazes. You start off with the red block Thomas, that can jump quite a bit and thanks to the magic of the narrator we find is a rather cheery fellow. You then add a series of blocks each with their own traits like the ability to float in water, or the ability to bounce other blocks higher that additionally have similar interesting traits that we learn via the narration. The game reminds me in a way of Bastion, in that the game itself is somewhat lackluster but it is the superb narration and voice acting that make it really pop out there. Thankfully this same narration is artfully displayed on screen at the same time allowing for the experience to translate hopefully to the hearing impaired.

Not A Bel Game

This game very much did not seem like a “Bel” game, as in there is no carnage, no body count… and I am forced to solve a series of structured puzzles to get through the levels. The funny thing is… I spent most of my night playing it and next thing I know it is 12:30 and I am forcing myself to stop on the above level rather than “play just one more”. There is something unbelievably charming about this game, and just doesn’t make sense when you approach it from its most simple parts…. that it is a game about a series of blocks. The game tricks us into using that most human of traits, and attributing personalities and feelings to inanimate objects. Even when the narrator is not necessarily talking from the standpoint of a specific character… as you move that block you imagine what that character might be saying in your own head.

If you are like me and a Playstation Vita owner, with a Playstation Plus subscription… I highly suggest you install the game and give it a spin. If you are NOT like me… then I highly suggest you purchase the game because even at $10 for a what is essentially a puzzle platformer… it is money extremely well spent. Nothing about this game makes sense at face value, that you should not want to care about a series of blocks on the screen in the way that you do. As you progress through the levels and are slowly being trained to face new challenges you truly do. The game does an amazing job at introducing concepts slowly and then building upon those concepts in each progressive level. Most of the levels will involve solving a challenge with a subset of blocks and each time there is an often poignant narrative that goes with it explaining how the blocks feel about being split up. I am shocked an amazed that I could feel this way about a series of abstract pixels.

Very Bel Game

The other game I played a significant amount of last night was once again Divinity II. At this point it feels like I am getting near the end, considering I am fighting through progressively larger and larger waves of mobs at a given time. This is honestly a bit disappointing, considering the early combat was extremely interesting and involved some interesting boss mechanics, and now the answer seems to be the old tried and true throw more bodies at the screen. That said I am still enjoying myself, but there are lots of things that end up frustrating me, like getting stunned by mobs that are halfway across the screen. As I have progressed through the levels, it feels like playing as anything but an archer is really a sub optimal experience. I’ve noticed that even the “Wizard” and “Healer” type mobs now fire nothing but a bow, and the overall gameplay experience at times devolves into a shooter.

I feel like maybe this is why Divinity: Original Sin did not return this game into the “behind the back” dungeon crawler. The throw waves of mobs at the player thing tends to work fairly well in a Baldur’s Gate type game, but it just feels childish when you do the same mechanic in a first person or over the shoulder style scenario. Thankfully there are still vignettes of smaller scale gameplay that work extremely well, and interesting puzzles to unlock… but the overall depth and granularity of the game seems to have decreased. There are entire zones that are made up of nothing but these giant flying fortresses that you clear first in dragon form and then can clear out on the ground. In all of them so far, it has been a focus on quantity of mobs not necessarily the quality of them. I am somewhat off the rails right now in my play through, but I am wanting to see it to the end.

#DivinityII #ThomasWasAlone

Divinity II: Directors Cut

June 29, 2014 by Belghast

Old Time Rock and Roll

Something interesting happened this weekend, I was hit with a critical case of nostalgia. This all started while playing Wasteland 2 the other night, and seems to be continuing on today as I search for more games to give me that classic PC role-playing game experience. I said yesterday that I was in a bit of an existential funk, and that seems to continue. While I like the concept of playing Wildstar and Elder Scrolls Online… for whatever reason right now they are just too fast paced for my current mood. Essentially I am needing games that are a bit more prodding and deliberate, and preferably without other players bothering me. I am going through one of my retreating phases, and I right now I just want to be lost in my own little world.

Divinity II: Directors Cut

I’ve had this game in my steam inventory for quite some time, but for one reason or another I never actually fired it up. I had heard really good things about the Divinity series and the other night my friends Tam and Ashgar were off playing the brand new Divinity: Original Sin. So when I cranked this game up I was expecting a Baldur’s Gate esc game along the lines of the original Divinity and Original Sin. What it is instead however is something more akin to Knights of the Old Republic. The control scheme is a behind the back pseudo action combat setup that still somehow manages to feel old school at the same time. The controls are a bit prodding at times, but this is not exactly a high action game that allows you to dodge out of combat here and there to avoid enemies. Instead there are minor flourishes that you can do here and there to improve your success, but for the most part it is stand up fighting.

The character creator is adequate, as I was able to create something that I liked, however there really are not a lot of options. Essentially you can be blonde or brown haired, and with a few different facial and hair choices for each color. This allowed me to create something I liked enough to make me happy, but there really is not a lot of configuration available. Thankfully in Divinity: Original Sin the newest game they seem to have fixed all of this and given players a bajillion different options. I would say the customization is “passible” if only because it allows me to give my character long hair and a beard, which is “close enough” to the Belghast appearance. The limited appearances makes me really glad the game is not Asian inspired, because I am pretty sure I would not have been able to create any character that I could stand.

The game utilizes a silent protagonist with text dialog options for most of the interactions, and quite honestly I am happy with this. I always find it jarring when my character has a voice that is not my own. So if I am given the option of a well voiced character, or a silent one… I will almost always choose the silent one. These games are about me inhabiting the space of the character, and not about watching the lives of someone else. So in a game like Uncharted… I am watching a movie unfold in front of me that I am not a part of, this type of game however… it is all about the character being an extension of me. The dialog is charming at times, but nothing I would call spectacular. But then again I am not really playing this sort of thing for the dialog, I am playing it for the overall adventure.

The game is several years old at this point, but it still looks extremely good. This is no Skyrim mind you, but the world definitely looks believable and something I don’t mind spending a significant amount of time in. Occasionally there are some really nice vistas and lighting effects like this one that I find really nice looking. During some of my screenshots I was running on the default settings, but once I cranked everything up to max the game started to look extremely beautiful. The visualization options like the mini-map and where we are supposed to go for various quests is pretty much non-existent. The end result means you need to pay attention to the dialog and spend a good deal of time wandering around in order to figure out how exactly to complete each of the quests you are given by townsfolk.

I’ve not really played enough to get a good handle on how exactly character progression will work. However when you first start the game you are set up as a Dragon Slayer, and as part of the ritual that gives you the powers of a dragon… it also wipes your memories, giving you a clean construct for picking a brand new path for your character. You essentially have the choice of following the path of the melee warrior, the ranger or the mage. In the first town you can freely switch between them, but once you leave the village your choice is locked. There is thankfully a little testing ground that allows you to try each of the combat styles and see what fits you the best. I of course went with the melee warrior, but I feel like the ranger would probably be extremely fun as well. Mage on the other hand… felt odd because there was a significant cast timer on each of the attacks.

Admittedly so many times with these Steampowered Sunday games, I play it for a little bit but then never return to it. I don’t think that is going to be the case with Divinity II. This honestly seems like about the perfect game for my current mental state. It feels the right speed, and I can cocoon myself in this fantasy world and explore it without the need to feel like I am letting anyone down in the process. So while I have taken a break to knock out my morning blog post, as soon as I finish writing I am going to return to clearing the goblin camp I was working on when I paused the gameplay. Right now on the summer sale this game is only $8 for the directors cut, and so far I am loving it. If you are looking for an old school Knights of the Old Republic style adventure, then it might also be the game for you.

Enter the Waffles

Last night we had an odd recording of AggroChat as has happened before in the past, we had two of the original cast otherwise busy this week. I butchered the hell out of the explaination, but thankfully I was corrected. Essentially this week Tam and Ashgar are off to visit Kodra and to somehow have an intervention to replace his current machine, that we have not so lovingly referred to as a toaster. That said I feel like maybe that is a disservice to toasters everywhere, as they seem to be far more functional. As you’ve listened to our podcast in the past, when Kodra goes robot on us, it has nothing to do with his internet connection but is instead his machine freaking out. Here is hoping operation replace Kodras machine has been a success. In the meantime that left us down two people for the podcast and thankfully we had replacements all too happy to step in.

This is the first show to include Warenwolf, another one of our multi-year old chat group, also lovingly referred to as Waffles thanks to Mumble pronouncing his name oddly a few times. In addition to Waffles we are joined by Dallian once again who is the best fill-in guest ever, and pretty much is just now our regular “5th man”. We talk about the Steam Sale, Wasteland 2, Saints Row IV, Lego Minifigures Online, Wildstar, and Warlords of Draenor alpha among other things. We ran a bit short this week due to some technical difficulties causing chunks of the show to get edited out, but I hope you will all still enjoy the results. I believe next week we should be returning to our regular format.

#AggroChat #SteampoweredSunday #DivinityII

Crimzon CLover World Ignition

June 22, 2014 by Belghast

Technical Difficulties

Last night was probably the roughest time I have had editing the AggroChat podcast in the eleven episodes we have been running. Mostly this centers around us trying to change the way we record the show. Since its inception we have been recording it on the House Stalwart mumble server in a private and locked down channel. This worked pretty well and produced the first ten episodes without much issue. However on July 19th that server will be going away and as a guild we will be permanently switching to the Alliance of Awesome Teamspeak server. In theory Teamspeak does the same type of things that mumble does, so I thought we could simply record our channel without much issue. Turns out that was not quite the case.

Mostly we had a lot of issues with Kodra coming through either garbled or not at all when he was holding down his push to talk key. Apparently on his end it was me that was coming through like this. Oddly enough Ashgar and Rae didn’t seem to have any problems at all. It might be something we can fiddle with codec wise to make it work better, but honestly after the trouble I had with last nights podcast I am just of the opinion that we not try and record on teamspeak again. We have access to a more private mumble server, and I am guessing from now on we will just use that one instead. A lot of folks have suggested skype, but none of us are really skype users… so that would take its own trial and error to figure out how to really use it.

Last night we finished recording around 9:30 and I started editing by 10 pm. I did not actually finish editing the podcast until well after 12:30. The hard part was trying to glue together enough audio out of the garbled sections to make sense of what was being said. I’ve listened to most of it while I was editing and I think the end result works. However if you hear something that doesn’t quite make sense… it was probably me trying to make the of a corrupted segment of speech. While I don’t think the show was our weakest, it definitely made for some strained recording time since we kept having to redo segments that did not transmit. Hopefully what did make it through is enjoyable.

Fly That Geek Flag High

In this weeks episode we have the original cast reunited again. Ashgar is back from doing whatever it was that Ashgar was doing the week before, and Kodra is back from the awesome gaming convention Origins. As we had talked two weeks ago, Kodra gave us a run down of what exactly he did at Origins. This leads to a little discussion about something that is unfortunate in the gaming and geek communities… geek on geek shaming. Apparently Kodra catches some crap from the Magic the Gathering gamers for his choice of playing the My Little Pony card game. But hey we pretty much support all potential diversions here on AggroChat.

Additionally we talk about the Warlords of Draenor expansion and my experiences so far with the Alpha. We also talk at length about the Wildstar patch schedule and our hopes that they are actually able to maintain it. Join us for these topics along with a bunch of other ones that just get slipped in here and there was we go. Since neither Ash or Kodra were here to talk E3 2014, we do a bit of a callback there as well to talk about a few things that make people excited. Remember to let your geek flag fly high, but remember to respect everyone else’s choice of flag as well.

Crimzon Clover World Ignition

For the last couple of weeks I have been trying to get enough time to really give this game a proper playing. My friend Ashgar and I seem to be the only folks in our immediate circle of friends that really appreciate the “bullet hell” shooter. So when a new one comes out, he sometimes throws it on my game pile because he knows I will actually play it with him. The latest one of these is a random gifting of Crimzon Clover, and if you want to see a more logical and proper write-up about the game check out Ash’s blog. The other night when he was working on his indepth reviews of the game I took a break from Four Job Fiesta and Wildstar to play Crimzon Clover with him. I say play it with him… but mostly we just happened to be on voice chat at the same time while both of us are in game. It sadly does not support internet multiplayer gaming.

The game actually does a fair bit of bait and switch. When I booted it up and started playing the other night I originally thought it was going to be a “Shmup” and not really a “Bullet Hell” shooter. This however changes quickly as it somewhat eases you into the game play as you get used to the movement controls and various attacks. By the time you reach the first boss however things have escalated to the point where you are dodging the attacks like crazy. The game itself is extremely clean and the controls responsive. This is the sort of game where you just hold down the fire button at all times and spend the rest of your time looking for the only safe spot on the screen. I question in this genre why the fire isn’t just toggled on and left on, since there is never really a point at which you don’t want to be holding it down.

As is often the case with this type of game you end up with the choice between different ships. Type-I tends to be the most baseline and the easiest to control, whereas Type-II and Type-III give you a benefit in one area but make another area variable through the play session. I started off trying Type-II but quickly fell back on going with the tried and true “default option”. Ash actually managed to beat the game, but I only made it through boss number four before deciding my fingers were too sore to continue onwards. Apparently in order to truly beat the game, you have to make it through without hitting continue. If you do that you get a different ending and I believe a different boss encounter. This also seems to be a theme with a lot of these very serious games. I remember in the BlazBlue games there were “good” endings and “bad” endings depending on how you did in the earlier content leading up to the final encounter.

I have to say this game is a really good entry into the genre, and combined with Danmaku Unlimited 2 gives some seriously good options for Bullet Hell shooters on steam right now. I am happy that this genre is alive and well and did not die with the death of arcades. This specific title is interesting in that it is what they call a Doujin or essentially the Japanese version of an Independent PC game. This appears to be another thing that steam is doing right, in that it is giving these games a market in the united states. Recettear is another one of these Doujin games and it has been wildly popular and also likely would never have been seen here without steam. If you dig the Bullet Hell shooter genre, this is one of the more pristine examples I have seen in a long while. You should totally check it out because right now during the steam sale you can pick it up for only $7. This game is more than worth that money even if you only slightly like shooters.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD

May 4, 2014May 3, 2014 by Belghast

Steampowered Sunday #12

This weeks episode of Steampowered Sunday is chock full of self indulgent cheatery. Firstly we have plans on going out and about Sunday morning, so I am technically playing the game and doing this review Saturday night shortly before recording AggroChat. The second bit of cheatery is that normally I play through a game in my steam back catalog. That however is not the case this week as currently steam is having a sale on all Activision titles. Among the list was one that caught my eye. I had noticed it a few times in the past but was never at a price point I was wiling to snap it up for. However yesterday for $5 I figured it was well worth that just for a trip down memory lane.

THHDGame 2014-05-03 19-32-02-65 Something you need to know about Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater franchise is that I played the hell out of it. I was one of those little skater kids, and I even went so far as to have the “Tony Hawk” style “hangover” haircut. As a result when this came out for the original Playstation I latched onto it with both hands. One of the things I always wanted was a really good skating game, however we were stuck with either Skate or Die that at least had a free style ramp mode, or 720* which lacked any kind of free skate option… and if you took too long you were chased by an angry swarm of bees. No game gave me what I wanted, which was the ability to faff about without a timer ticking and do all sorts of nifty tricks. This game franchise had exactly that, and I spent countless hours playing and it and it’s higher resolution cousins on the Dreamcast.

Memory Lane

When the I got my Playstation 2 one of the first titles I picked up was Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3. So I knew one of two things was going to happen. Either I would have a wonderful romp down memory lane, or I would be severely disappointed by the crappy remake. Thankfully the game is pretty much a 1080p remake of the original playstation title, and this is a good thing. Playing the game with a XBOX 360 controller on my PC feels almost exactly like I remember playing it on the PSX. All the tricks worked essentially the same, and I struggled with the same problems I ever did. The game works the same way, each map has a ton of objectives and as you move your way around the area you get bonus scores for collecting them. As always the first objective I generally go for is for grabbing the letters S K A T E scattered around the room.

Additionally all of the old secrets are exactly where I remember them, and accessed through the same kind of tricks. I really was not expecting anything more than a graphical update, so I was not terribly disappointed to find that literally nothing had changed. I got the same enjoyment crashing through the room on top of the ramp as I ever did. One of my favorite things about the series was trying to find all the named “gaps” and a lot of these work the same as they always did. The only thing that is confusing really is that the game is like a remix of all of the Tony Hawk titles. There are maps from the early THPS games as well as the later Underground games. Overall this gives you a good mix of things to go and explore, and Free Skate mode is just as much of a guilty pleasure as it ever was.

Stripped Down Game

My biggest complaint about the game is that it is greatly stripped down. Gone is the ability to create custom skaters, and also gone are the weird unlockable characters like the Neversoft eyeball guy, and Spiderman. The lack of ability to create your own skater really hurts my overall enjoyment of the title. I liked creating a skater that was a reasonable facsimile of myself and customizing his stat package to be only the things I cared about… namely street skating. I found that overall Eric Koston has the closest stat package to what I would want, so I have been using him. The game has been out for two years, so I doubt that we will be seeing any kind of DLC that adds in the missing functionality. My only hope is that maybe just maybe someone cares enough to create a mod that lets you do the same thing.

The other missing feature is the skate park creator. I spent hours building interesting skate parks to go explore, and I remember THPS 2 for the Dreamcast had a wide variety of items you could choose from. I realize this title was released not only on the PC but also tablets and phones… so there is a limited amount of stuff they could realistically squeeze into the game given those constraints. Even with these missing features, I have definitely gotten my $5 worth of fun. Sure I still have my playstation, playstation 2 and dreamcast… but I am not going to go dig them out of the closet and hook them up just to play Tony Hawk. This little download has allowed me to relive some of those memories without having to do that.

Watch Me Suck at THPS!

As has been the trend lately, I recorded the entire play though of THPS, or at least a good chunk of it. You can see just how bad I suck at the game these days, and how many jumps and tricks I miss. I had a blast doing it, and I need to figure out a better option for a push to talk key while playing a game that requires a controller. As a result there are huge blocks of time where I say nothing. But it is fun nonetheless. If you had good memories of the game like I did, you might check out the sale while it is still going on. Well worth the few bucks, and the game performs extremely well. I didn’t notice anything glitchy about it, so it seems like a pretty solid experience.

Episode 4: Mentors for Everyone

Last night we recorded Episode 4 of the AggroChat podcast, and once again we had our regular cast in place. Kodra was back from his business trip, and Rae was no longer trying to join the circus. I tried a little experiment last night, that I probably won’t repeat again. I had been concerned that I had been overly directing the flow of conversation, so I tried to take a step back and let the rest of the hosts introduce topics. The end result lead me to do way more editing and massaging on this episode than normal as I deleted a ton of awkward pauses. The end result is still fairly interesting. We ended up talking about the current state of Elder Scrolls Online with its launch and remaining bugs. We talked quite a bit about ArcheAge and how intrigued I am by it. Finally I nudged the rest of my panel into talking about League of Legends. They had been threatening for weeks to derail the podcast, and I encouraged it… and the end result was not terribly derailed after all.

#SteamPoweredSunday #AggroChat #TonyHawkProSkater #ElderScrollsOnline #ESO